“MUSE in Focus” is a series of curated resources that comprises content from participating publishers across Project MUSE’s broad corpus. They are designed to contribute interdisciplinary, scholarly context to current events and issues. Each “MUSE in Focus” project is carefully assembled by MUSE’s content development team in collaboration with publishers, editors, and top scholars to provide an interdisciplinary survey of scholarship for researchers, instructors, and general readers alike.
The latest, titled Humanity’s “Code Red” on Climate Change, explores the human causes and effects of climate change, and the urgency of action to avert future catastrophe. It contains books, special issues and articles on the topic. Why focus on climate change? It stems from the August 2021 release of a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that detailed the urgent threat of climate change over the coming decades. The report calls for immediate action to address the deeply entrenched global systems that rely on and perpetuate the consumption of greenhouse-gases. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres described the findings as a "code red for humanity."
The scope of this challenge is daunting. Each year brings increased temperatures, extreme weather, and wildfires signifying the damages already done. Preventing further destruction will require a broad understanding of the myriad social, political, cultural, and economic forces that have exacerbated the problem. “Humanity’s ‘Code Red’ on Climate Change” explores the human causes and effects of climate change, and the urgency of action to avert future catastrophe.
These compilations serve as snapshots of top scholarship at the time of publication, and may be updated periodically when appropriate with new or newly relevant content. “MUSE in Focus” content is made freely available for a limited time to reach interested readers beyond those with institutional access. The series includes downloadable bibliographies in multiple formats to enable easy citation, inclusion in syllabi, and integration into other bibliographies or reading lists. The hope is that these projects serve as entry points for deeper engagement with complex topics beyond the headlines.